Much like Ronald Reagan, President Donald Trump spent time as a Democrat before switching parties. While that naturally led to many being skeptical just how right-wing Trump could possibly be in his policymaking, those fears were clearly unfounded.
With President Trump, we saw the first shot at comprehensive tax reform since President Ronald Reagan, and finally saw massive cuts in red tape that Republicans have been promising for decades. Those are just two achievements – Trump has made it clear that he’s intent on destroying every possible aspect of the Obama legacy that he can. (RELATED: President Trump Is Taking Obama’s Legacy Out With the Trash).
While that’s led to Trump polling lower among Democrats than any other Republican president in modern history, it’s resulted in the exact opposite among Republicans. According to polling from Gallup, on his 500th day in office (June 4th), Trump’s approval among Republicans was massively high, at 87 percent, making him the most popular Republican president among other Republicans since WWII.
While George W. Bush was at 96 percent 500 days in, that was due to a massive surge in approval that Bush received after the September 11th attacks, in which his overall approval ratings briefly topped 90 percent among all Americans (and nearly 100 percent among Republicans). As you can see charted below, in absence of 9/11, Bush’s approval would’ve likely been in the mid-80s among Republicans. For that reason, I think it’s appropriate to consider Bush’s approval something of an outlier at 96 percent (even though it would’ve still been very high).
With that in mind, here’s how President Trump fares. Note that the table is how Presidents fared under their own supporters (so for Obama, his approval is among Democrats):
Most interesting is that Reagan, the benchmark for right-wing presidents, had “only” 77 percent approval 500 days in among his fellow Republicans. Depending on how successful Trump is in remaining in the good graces of his Republican following, he could be the next standard bearer for Republicans.
